


beneath a sheet that the cold has covered

by YdrittE



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Comfort, Gen, Jimmy Novak (mentioned) - Freeform, Light Angst, Nonbinary Character, Pillow & Blanket Forts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:26:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29428089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YdrittE/pseuds/YdrittE
Summary: In which Castiel shows up in the middle of the night in Claire’s room, and Claire responds very reasonably by building a blanket fort.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	beneath a sheet that the cold has covered

**Author's Note:**

> Don’t ask me when in the show this is supposed to be set because I don’t know either. Also Castiel is referred to by they/them pronouns in this because it’s my incoherent attempt at fluff and I get to choose the gender euphoria.
> 
> Title from “Ódýr” by Hatari.

Claire’s not sure what has woken her. It might have been a noise. Or maybe her brain telling her there’s someone in her room, some long forgotten survival instinct kicking in. The alarm clock on her bedside table shows that it’s almost midnight.

There’s a person-shaped silhouette next to her bed – or rather, moving away from her bed, towards the door. Their footsteps are slow and careful and almost entirely silent. Their clothes are rustling. Claire is just barely able to make out an overcoat, discoloured by the darkness. Recognition rushes through her.

She sits up in bed and rubs the sleep from her eyes, excitement and despair tinting her voice in equal measure. “Dad?”

The silhouette freezes in place. For a moment, they don’t move. Then they turn. Claire knows before they even open their mouth.

“No. It’s Castiel. I’m sorry.”

Claire tries not to let the disappointment show on her face. She knows she doesn’t succeed. “Castiel? What are you doing here?” An angel showing up at your house is supposed to be a good thing, according to the people at church. Claire knows the opposite is usually true.

Castiel shifts their weight from one foot the other in an oddly human fashion. “I’m…” They falter. A second passes in tense silence before they speak again. Their voice isn’t exactly shaking, but it seems less steady than Claire remembers it. “I suppose I’m hiding.”

“Hiding? From monsters?”

They hurriedly shake their head. “No, no, of course not. Not monsters. I’m hiding from… a human, I suppose.” They don’t say why an angel would hide from a human, and Claire doesn’t ask.

“You’re hiding from someone, and you come to _our house_?” She’s trying to keep her voice down, but she can’t help but be angry. Castiel promised. They _promised_ there wouldn’t be anymore trouble.

“Nobody’s coming to look for me,” they assure her quickly. Claire might be imagining the tint of desperation in their voice. “I just… I just need to hide for a little bit. I’m sorry. I did not mean to wake you.”

They look smaller somehow. Claire’s not quite sure how. Maybe it’s the set of their shoulders, or the way they’re slightly ducking their head. They look sad, in a way. Upset.

She sighs. “I wouldn’t go out there if I were you. Mom would probably be really upset you’re here. She’s… well. You know.”

Castiel doesn’t know. That’s kind of the problem. Their hand draws back from where it was gripping the doorknob anyway.

“Okay,” they say simply.

The pause is a bit too long and very awkward, with Castiel seemingly unable to figure out what the correct next step in this situation would be. They look so lost, standing there. Claire makes a decision.

“You said you were hiding, right? You’re not properly hiding yet,” she says. Castiel tilts their head in obvious confusion. “If someone came in the door, they could still see you. We’ve got to hide better!”

If Castiel registers the switch from ‘you need to hide’ to ‘ _we_ need to hide’, they don’t show it. Claire scrambles out of bed and pushes past them, puts a finger on her lips and mock-whispers “Wait here!” as she tiptoes out the door. The faint noise of the TV from downstairs tells her Mom isn’t in bed yet. The coast is clear.

She silently makes her way to her parents’ – her mother’s, for now – bedroom. In the corner, there’s a large wicker basket and inside it waits the thing she is seeking. The blankets are folded neatly and smell like laundry detergent. Claire grabs as many as she can carry, which is quite a few, and drags them back to her own room. They slide on the floor behind her.

Castiel looks up when she enters. They haven’t sat down or moved at all while she was gone. They look at her, then at the pile of blankets she is carrying, then back at her.

“We’re building a blanket fort,” Claire announces.

She hasn’t done this in a while, a few years at least. But she remembers how cosy and warm it always was, and how much fun to pretend it was a cave or a tent in the wilderness. And how safe it made her feel.

-

The fort she builds isn’t a masterful construction by any means, but it will do. It’s sort of awkwardly crammed in between her desk, the bookshelf next to her bed and a chair positioned square in the middle of the room. Several desk drawers and stacks of books trap and weigh down the blankets to keep the whole thing standing. It’s a bit of a mess. Claire feels oddly proud of it.

“No one can find you in a blanket fort. It’s the safest place in the world.” She is acutely aware of how silly she must sound. She’s much too old to be building blanket forts, and if _she’s_ too old then Castiel, who has been around since the dinosaurs or whatever and who is also an angel and thus doesn’t need a blanket fort because they’re powerful and immortal and not a scared child, is _definitely_ too old for it. But Castiel, who is all that and more, just nods.

Claire holds open the blanket in front of the entryway and gestures for Castiel to get in. They crouch down and survey the inside of the fort for a moment, perhaps deciding whether or not to go along with what must seem like utter foolishness, before crawling inside and awkwardly sitting down with their knees pulled up to their chest. The fort is technically a bit too small for an adult man’s body, never mind two people, but that’s not going to stop either of them.

Claire grabs her pillow and blanket from the bed and carries them over to the fort, where she, too, crouches down and crawls inside.

It’s a bit roomier than the blanket forts she used to build when she was really, really little. More structurally sound, too – she doesn’t want it to fall on their heads while they’re sleeping, after all.

Castiel watches her silently as she arranges her bedding, and doesn’t seem to register her holding out a blanket to them for a few seconds. Whatever happened, it must have shaken them quite a bit.

“Lie down,” Claire tells them, in what she’s sure isn’t a commanding tone at all. “In a fort, nobody can find us, but even if they tear it down, we’ll be so close to the ground that they’ll just overlook us. We’ll stay really still and they’ll leave and we’ll be safe anyway.” For emphasis, she pulls her own blanket over her body and curls into a ball on the floor, her head on the pillow and one of the chair legs sort of digging into her lower back.

Castiel tilts their head again and then slowly, very slowly, lowers themselves to the floor next to her, facing her, with as much distance between them as the fort allows. They don’t have a pillow, but Claire is skilled enough at building blanket forts to cushion the floor, so it should be fine. They blink once, twice, and then let out a slow breath. Their body visibly relaxes. Claire’s pretty sure they can do that at will.

“Alright,” they say, so quietly Claire almost doesn’t hear it.

She smiles at them, nestles deeper into her blanket, and closes her eyes.

-

She drifts in and out of sleep for a while. Castiel is awake and staring at her the first few times she wakes back up, until she gives them an annoyed little nudge and tells them “Close your eyes, you weirdo. It’ll help you relax.” After that, they look like they’re sleeping whenever she checks. She doesn’t think they’re actually asleep, but that doesn’t really matter. As long as they’re not frowning so deeply anymore.

-

Claire isn’t sure what time it is when she wakes up for the last time, but outside the blanket fort the room seems slightly brighter than before, so probably early morning. The air inside the fort is warm and smells faintly of laundry detergent. Castiel is awake and looking at her.

They’re still on the floor, wrapped in the blanket she gave them. Their hair is even more of a mess than when they showed up. There’s something in their eyes she can’t quite place.

“What’s up,” she whispers. “Is it too early to say good morning?”

They blink at her. “It is currently 4:17 in the morning. I do not know if that qualifies as ‘too early’ or not.”

Claire grins. “It doesn’t. Morning, Castiel.”

“Good morning, Claire.”

Sleeping on the floor wasn’t the best idea she’s ever had, as the crick in her neck and the sore spot where the chair dug into her lower back are quick to inform her, but she kind of doesn’t care right now. She also probably lost at least an hour or two of sleep. It’s fine.

It’s fine because Castiel sits upright and doesn’t frown and attempts a tiny smile that sort of fails. They stay inside the blanket fort and watch while Claire drags her pillow and blanket back onto the bed and smooths out the worst of the wrinkles.

The silence is less awkward this time.

“Claire?” The voice is unusually gentle. It sounds almost like Dad. Almost. Claire swallows past the lump in her throat and turns around.

Castiel has left the blanket fort and is standing in that slightly too tense way they always have about them. The faint rays of morning light from the window catch in the mess that is their hair. It looks soft, almost feathery.

“Yeah?”

They hesitate. “Thank you. I know this fort you’ve built doesn’t actually fulfil a protective function, but… Thank you.”

Claire gasps in mock affront. “How dare you disrespect my blanket fort building skills like that!”

Dad had taught her how to build them because of the nightmares she’d have when she was little. He taught her because she’d come to his and Mom’s room crying and afraid of monsters under the bed and in the closet and down the stairs. She isn’t sure what monsters Castiel was afraid of when they came to her. What they’re hiding from, _who_ they’re hiding from. But she knows quite a few things about trying – and failing – to feel safe. She doesn’t know how to tell Castiel that, so she just smiles. “You’re welcome.”

-

By the time her mother knocks on her door to tell her breakfast is ready, Castiel has already said their goodbyes and disappeared. Amelia stares at the blanket fort for almost a whole minute when she opens the door, with an expression on her face that is dangerously close to grief. She doesn’t say anything about it during breakfast or when Claire leaves for school.

The blankets are back in the wicker basket in her mother’s room by the time Claire comes home, folded neatly as if nothing had happened and smelling of laundry detergent.

Claire drags the wicker basket into her own room and keeps it there. They don’t talk about it. Castiel doesn’t come back. Neither does her dad. No further blanket forts are built.


End file.
